Log off

"We are only up for addiction to mood-altering devices because our emotions seem to need managing, if not bludgeoning by relentless stimulus. We are only happy to drop into the dead-zone trance because of whatever is disappointing in the world of the living." (Richard Seymour, The Twittering Machine)

"When you’re doing nothing except existing, when your only available object is your own existence, when you’re facing the full demonic inconceivability of being here, in the world, thrown into awareness of your own being for a reason you will never know, or possibly no reason at all. Nobody wants to think about that shit. So you look at your phone." (Sam Kriss, "How to live without your phone")

"I went home / all alone / I checked my phone / and now I'm inside it." (Wet Leg, "Oh No")

Look, my argument here is not that the real world is good, but simply that I think it's time to try harder to exist within it. I can't stop looking at my phone these days, and I can't bear it. My neck is fucked and my brain is fried. No more accidentally clicking on videos of a white women crying on my Explore page. No more awful automation. No more staring at a tiny billboard that is warping my thumbs on a daily—hourly—basis. It's Taurus season, the time of touching grass, the perfect time to log off. Unfurl yourself luxuriously towards the sky like a sunflower. Consider the following instead. You could:

~ Feel your brain tingle back to life by watching the twisty thesis on love that is CERTIFIED COPY.

~ Go for a long drive and listen to Misora by Sachiko Kanenobu (during the day) and I Got Heaven by Mannequin Pussy (at night).

~ Drink an adult cherry cola, made with red vermouth, Luxardo, and Diet Coke.

~ Pick one author (ideally non-contemporary) and start reading everything they've ever written (Alice Munro, for me).

~ Read Rob Horning on photographing the eclipse.

~ Dress and decorate like Catherine Keener in OUT OF SIGHT:

~ Watch Adam Curtis' galaxy-brain documentary HYPERNOMALISATION. Think about power, and who holds the fate of the world in their hands, and what moral resistance to that could really look like.

~ Rewatch TENET, see above.

~ Organize a spring clean-up in your neighbourhood.

~ Bonus suggestion if you are in/near Ottawa: take a small dose of your substance of choice and spend some time alone in the Rideau Chapel at the National Gallery, experiencing Janet Cardiff's Forty-Part Motet. Pace around the room—you have to listen to each individual recording and get to know how they weave together.

~ Question everything (from Ali Smith's Spring and Sheila Heti's Alphabetical Diaries):